


Fly By Night

by signalbeam



Category: Persona 4
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dreams, Friendship, Gen, Genderswap, Rule 63, Spoilers, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-09
Updated: 2011-06-09
Packaged: 2017-10-20 06:42:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/209851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/signalbeam/pseuds/signalbeam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rumor has it that Seta had a boyfriend in the city.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fly By Night

“We’re here,” Yosuke says, and before Sayomi can say anything, the announcement comes over the speakerphone: “Okina City. The destination of this train is…” The rest of the noise is obscured by the grind of the doors opening and people standing up.

“Ah,” Sayomi says. She must have fallen asleep. Air conditioning on a hot day always—and here she pauses, because she doesn’t like to think in absolutes or certainties—makes her a little drowsy. Everything looks bright and harsh. She can’t open her eyes all the way just yet.

Yukiko’s hand falls onto her shoulder by accident as she shakes Chie awake. Sayomi’s shoulders curl, and the coldness flared up in her and became hot. “Sorry,” Yukiko says. Her other hand presses against the book in her lap, making folds into her dress. Chie reanimates, as though the electricity’s back on, and almost trips an old woman into a pole. Kanji and Rise are already moving off the train. Yosuke offers his hand to her as she stands, which Sayomi looks at, and then, internally, sighs at. Shirogane is there, too. She thinks Shirogane is following them off the train, and isn’t sure whether she’s impressed more by his tenacity, or exasperated by his dogged faith that they are going about Inaba hoisting bodies in the air with piano wire and fishing poles.

Ah, yes, Sayomi thinks, watching as Chie apologizes to the old woman and Rise tries to latch onto Kanji’s arm and Yosuke tries to not blush or make eye contact with her. These are her friends.

Yosuke unhooks his headphones from his ears. “Had a nice dream?” he says.

“Yeah,” Sayomi says. On some nights she dreams of familiar things: her friends, her teachers, taking tests wearing nothing but cupcakes, so on and so forth. And on other nights she dreams of fire bursting out of her, and even worse, the endless darkness that comes next. The summer heat’s almost like a wall. She walks into it, and immediately feels exhausted and tired again.

Rise flaps her hand in front of her face and says, “Wow, senpai. It’s sweltering, isn’t it? That’s why I brought a parasol.” She pops it open. It comes close to poking Kanji’s nose. Sayomi winces in sympathetic alarm. “Want to walk under it with me?”

While they were waiting at the train station, Rise also offered Sayomi the opportunity to lather sunscreen on her back and chest. “I’ll pass,” Sayomi says.

“Damn,” Rise mumbles. She slips her hand into Kanji’s arm. Despite Kanji’s best efforts to sound angry, he doesn’t look entirely displeased.

“Geeze,” Yosuke says. “She’s so touchy. What’s with her?” There’s a beat. “What’s with you? You know that you could be arm-in-arm with _Risette_ right now? Most guys would kill to be you.”

“Ugh, Yosuke, you’re so gross,” Chie says. She gives Yosuke a shove through the gate. “Why can’t you be more like Kanji-kun? He’s such a gentleman.”

“It ain’t like that,” Kanji says. “Don’t see the big deal is about her, anyway.”

“Don’t say things like that,” Sayomi says. “Girls are sensitive.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” says Rise, as she jams her tiny, pin-point elbow into Kanji’s enormous rib. Kanji flinches, but doesn’t do anything else beside that. “Everyone has their own tastes. Right, Kanji-kun?”

Yukiko giggles, and whispers something into Chie’s ear. Yosuke rubs his shins—he must have tripped into something—and says, “What’s with you, Sayomi? Bad break up or what?”

Maybe. The odd thing is, she doesn’t remember, even though she knows that “bad break up” doesn’t even begin to describe it. The city feels like a dream to her, like it happened to someone else years and years ago. She likes going to Okina. It lets her extrapolate what the life that she should have had should have been like.

“Sorry, man,” Yosuke says. “I didn’t know.”

“Nothing happened,” Sayomi says.

“You sure?” Yosuke says.

Chie and Yukiko are walking hand-in-hand. Rise and Kanji almost look like a couple. Yosuke is watching her, hair in his eyes. She remembers something, faintly, at the corner of her mind, and says, “Yes.”

 

*

 

Sayomi needs summer clothes. All of hers were accidentally sent to her parents in Indonesia instead of to Inaba. Her parents promised to send them to her back in April, and she hoped that it'd magically arrive for weeks, until finally it became too hot to do anything except die or sweat. “Oh, thank god,” Rise said when Sayomi said she was going to Okina. “You look so dowdy in those boxy clothes. So unflattering, senpai. Maybe you should get a haircut, too.”

That prompted Kanji, Yosuke, and Yukiko to chime in. Yukiko’s the nicest and says, “It makes you look washed out.” Kanji says that she’s “industrial.” Yosuke says he didn’t care as long as he got to buy some records. Now he’s saying that again: “I could be buying records now instead of standing here like I’ve been whipped.”

“So go on, then,” Rise says to Yosuke. “You’re taking up our air. Shoo.”

Yosuke cranks up the volume of his headphones. “I don’t want to,” Yosuke says. “I’m her best friend.” He shoots her a desperate look. She gives him a smile, even though she can’t remember if she’s ever had a best friend before, and isn’t sure what having one means; she’s ruled out Chie and Yukiko on account of being dysfunctional, and Kou and Daisuke because they spend a lot of time with their tongues in each others’ mouths. So Yosuke stays, and Chie does, too, hissing things like, “Seriously, how long does it take for her to change into a dress?” and, “Hey, that one would look nice on you” and, “Oh, that one would _really_ look good on you” every few seconds into Yukiko’s ear just loudly enough for Sayomi to hear her.

She ends up buying almost twenty thousand yen worth of clothing. Her favorite is an ankle-length white dress that Kanji dismisses as bridal, Rise as stodgy, and Yukiko as interesting. Shirogane, sorting through the men’s underwear section, frowns at Sayomi’s choice. Yosuke nods his head to the beat of his music when she asks if she likes it, and Chie gives Sayomi a once over and then says, helplessly, “Oh, I don’t know. Don’t you think you should be showing more leg?”

“Yes, that’d be nice,” Yukiko says, almost absently. She fans herself with a pamphlet that says ‘Career Options For Young Women’ with a woman in a cat suit on it. Sayomi’s pretty sure it’s an advertisement to become a stripper. Chie tilts her head and stares at Sayomi’s legs, then Yukiko’s. There’s a moment.

“What, you want to try that?” Yosuke says. Chie kicks him in the knee. “Argh!”

“Maybe you should pick something that’ll let you move your arms more,” Yukiko says, fanning herself faster.

“A sundress,” says Kanji, and pounds his fist into his palm.

“I like this one,” Sayomi says. The others look at her like she’s just taken off her bra and waved it in the air.

“Oh, senpai,” Rise says. “You don’t want to do that. You look…” And then Rise squints and presses her two hands together. It’s a mystery what she’s trying to convey. It could be anything, really.

“Yes I do,” she says. She ends up buying both a sundress with a bright red pattern blazing across the side and the dress she wants. Fire, fire, she’ll be on fire. The song blaring out of Yosuke’s headphones sound almost like a warning.

 

*

 

It’s easier to talk to other people about themselves than it is for them to talk about her. Talking about herself is uncomfortable. There are always these questions that people ask that leave her smiling at them, like they’ve said, “I’m going to rip off your eyelids and make you watch me forever,” instead of, “So what are your parents like?” or “Which city did you live in?” When people make assumptions, she goes along with them, because she doesn’t know what else to do. She has distant parents and she lived in a city near Tokyo, but moved around a lot. She’s a serious girl. People say she’s quiet, and maybe they’re right. But there’s also nothing for her to say when there are so many blanks in her head.

What she does know is that humans are complex and complicated. Yet there are only so many ways that they can feel things and only so many feelings they can have in their heads. Relationships have their specificities, but fall into similar patterns and grooves. Even when the rest of the world is strange, this is familiar: hurt and pain, trust and betrayal. People don’t live life as much as they endure it, and this makes her sad, because life should be something that should be enjoyed, or at least not wasted.

The others don’t know how much they’re missing, she thinks, but she’s not really living, so what does she know about life? She feels broken, or fake.

 

*

 

Yosuke ends up blabbing his thoughts on Sayomi’s possible ex-boyfriend to all of their mutual friends. Sayomi thinks that she must have had a boyfriend. She’s not sure what else that feeling could be, but she doesn’t have much experience with feelings to begin with. She dreams of fire and darkness, but she doesn’t really remember any of it. She reads a book on dream interpretation at the library (there’s a surprisingly large occult section in the back) and comes to the conclusion that she’s dreaming about the repeated loss of her virginity to a man with an enormous penis. He doesn’t seem to have been a good lover.

Kou and Daisuke go up to her and challenge her to play a game of ball. Kou says that they’re going to pound this guy’s face in. Daisuke, bigger and burlier, ends up looking uncomfortable by the idea of chasing someone down. He mumbles something about the other guy being an ass, but maybe he just did it out of confusion, and then Kou hits Daisuke’s shoulder and tells Sayomi that he and Daisuke (“No we aren’t, Kou, lay off—”) are going to find her jerk ex and beat him with balls.

“You can’t,” she says.

“Why not?” Kou says.

The long, everlasting darkness; the dark, hollow space where she waited. A comb with strands of hair trapped in the teeth. A tempting fruit, glinting with promising, foreboding shadows. She clutches, reflexively, at her sailor collar and says, “He isn’t in this world anymore.”

Of course, that rumor flies even faster than the first.

 

*

 

After Ayane suggests that Sayomi should take a break from the orchestra club to mourn her lost love, Sayomi tracks Yosuke down and backs him into a wall. “You have to stop talking about me,” she says.

“I never talk about you,” Yosuke replies, and when Sayomi stares at him, he says, “Well, you’re not going to take to me about it. What else was I supposed to do?” She stares some more. “Look,” he says.

“It’s none of your business,” she says. “It just isn’t.”

“You don’t get to say that when you’re always in ours,” he says, his ears turning red in anger.

“What do you understand?” she says. “You’re the ones who make it mine.” Her head hurts. She doesn’t want to think about it. She turns away from him. When Yosuke touches her shoulder, she throws his hand off and goes to the nurse’s office to lie down.

 

*

 

While in the nurse’s office, she has a dream of an island in the sea, a large palace, and, unpleasantly, ugly babies.

She wakes up to Yukiko’s touch—it burns, even though her hands are cold—and discovering that she’s slept so long that Yukiko’s finished her duties at the school bulletin board and has gotten all her things together.

“Naoki-kun told me you were still in here,” Yukiko says. “I thought I’d pick you up.”

“Ah,” Sayomi says. Yukiko reaches for Sayomi’s bag, and their fingers touch. Sayomi feels like her head’s about to pop open. “Thanks.”

“Do you want to walk home together?” Yukiko says.

Sayomi pictures herself, going up in flames.

“We don’t live in the same direction,” she says. “We shouldn’t.”

 

*

 

On the first Sunday since the trip to Okina, she hasn’t spoken to Yosuke in three days, and Hisano tells Sayomi that she’s wearing a lovely dress, but it’s awfully old-fashioned and gloomy. Damning criticism from an old lady wearing black mourning clothes. Sayomi’s since found out that Hisano has ten sets of the same outfit.

“Young people should wear brighter colors,” Hisano says. “it’s the springtime of your life, after all.”

Summertime, really, judging from the heat. Sayomi wipes the sweat from her face.

“Ah,” Hisano says, and her gaze is misty behind her veil. Sayomi has always disliked this about Hisano. She’s too laid back and nostalgic to be death as death must be; but she likes this old lady for how kind and gentle and wise she is, despite her endless reservoirs of sentimentality. “Those were good times.”

“Even though they end?” Sayomi says.

Hisano’s fingers lace and unlace. “The moments that you cherish most are the ones that are gone the soonest,” she says. “You’ll understand it when you feel it, dear.”

 

*

 

‘Understand it when you feel it.’ Easier said than done.

She runs an errand in Shiroku. Adachi’s in there, too, with an armful of tissue boxes and a bag of cheap ramen. Sayomi, never knows how to deal with Adachi. She ends up making eye contact for a moment too long. Adachi looks her over up and down, then says, “That a new dress, Sayomi-kun?” He always uses -kun instead of -san, but at least it’s not -chan.

“Yeah,” Sayomi says. “That a new suit?”

He laughs, forced and hollow. For a moment, his face twists into a familiar expression, then turns back into a bumbling haplessness. “Dojima-san keeps me on a shoestring budget,” he says. “Pain in the neck. This here is my entire dinner for the next month.”

She’s pretty sure he’s talking about the ramen and not the tissue boxes. But there is no telling.

“Man, I wish I could afford a new suit,” he says. There’s a moment. He says, with a hint of patronizing generosity, “You look good in it. Shows your legs off. They’re nice.”

“Thank you,” Sayomi says. She doesn’t know what to say. She settles on, “So are yours.”

 

*

 

She has a dream that she’s on fire and wakes up finding out that she’s smothered herself with her pillow. The lightning whips through the clouds and the thunder cracks; the sounds are nostalgic, and bitterly familiar. Sayomi brings the covers over her head. She’s breathing too fast and can’t focus her eyes on anything, but there’s nothing to see except the blanket. Her head feels awful. Everything’s vibrating.

It takes her a moment to realize that the vibrations are her phone. It’s Yosuke. It’s also two in the morning. She picks up.

“Yosuke?” she says.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Yosuke says.

“Is it really two in the afternoon?” Sayomi says. “Because that’d be something to wake me for.”

There’s a long silence. “Yeah,” Yosuke says. He laughs. “Yeah, that’s it. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she says.

She wants to go back to sleep. Just when she’s about to hang up, Yosuke says, “I hate fighting with you. Let’s just forget about it.”

“I don’t even know what we’re fighting about,” she says.

“This is so stupid,” Yosuke grumbles. “Night, partner.”

The lightning splitting through the sky seems to answer back for her.

 

*

 

The thunder and lightning goes on until the next day. Sayomi goes to school and instead of going back home, goes to her part-time job at the gas station. She meets a lot of people at the station: the gloomy Namatame, who’s a good tipper; the loud and surprisingly kind detectives; the mothers and fathers of her classmates and friends. There’s a small problem where sometimes people—men, mostly, but she’s had fun flirting with a woman passing by from Tokyo with a pierced lip and a wild, youthful look in her eye—keep asking her for dinners or dates. Her boss threatens to beat them with a two-by-four, and tells her she can threaten them with a two-by-four if she so feels like it. She knew there was a reason why she liked working for him.

Sayomi isn’t afraid of much. Inaba’s a small town, so it’s not like she’s worried about getting robbed in the middle of the night or anything, murders notwithstanding. The rain doesn’t scare her at all. If anything, it’s a relief. Tomorrow, she thinks, will be beautiful.

It’s almost closing time, so she goes about her ritual of closing the doors and straightening out the mini-mart inside the station. She sees lights, cutting through the rain, and then someone pulling up to the full service station. Her watch says that there are still ten minutes to go. She jogs out to the customer.

Adachi’s expression is ugly at first, but then it smoothes out into something more pleasant and almost pleasing when he sees her. “Sayomi-kun,” he says. “Didn’t recognize you there at first.” He swings out of the car. His legs are surprisingly long and slim. He’d look nice in a dress.

“Well, I work here,” she says. “What can I do for you?”

“Just fill her up,” Adachi says. He pulls out a cigarette from his pocket and strikes a match. “I’ll be over there.” He walks to the edge of the gas station and smokes. He’s the type of person, she realizes, who will leave the stub of his cigarette on the ground for her to clean later. She feels a dull resentment towards him. What an inconvenient man.

It’s not a bad car. Korean, well cleaned, maybe fifteen years old. Maybe it’s his parents’ car or maybe it’s his own. Sayomi doesn’t think he’ll be receptive to questions.

She finishes filling the gas before he finishes his cigarette, so she decides to clean off his windows, too. She looks, and Adachi’s still there with his cigarette, but coughing now and doubled over. Once he’s cleared up, he comes to her with his cigarette not yet burned through.

“Damn,” he says. “Can’t do this chain smoking thing. You want a blow?”

“I’ll pass,” she says.

“Smart. It’s not a habit that you kick easy.” He digs for his wallet and then tosses her some cash, more than enough to pay. When she heads back, he shakes his head and says, “Keep the change. You need a ride home?”

“That’d be nice,” she says. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” says Adachi. He takes another drag, and then drops the cigarette and grinds it with his shoe. “Oh,” he says. “Sorry about that.”

“Well, it’s my job,” Sayomi says while thinking about stabbing him through the chest with a spear.

“I’ll wait for you out here,” Adachi says. He doesn’t look very sorry, although he’s making a big show of it, running his hand through his hair and shaking his head at himself. It’s not a good quality for a man to have. People will think him suspicious.

 

*

 

It takes her half an hour to finish closing up shop. On the way back, Adachi stops by his apartment first, apologizing as he does so, although she doesn’t really believe that he is sorry. “Need to pick some papers up for Dojima-san,” he says. “You know how he is.”

And then he makes her wait in the car. Sayomi checks her watch, and it turns out that she’s been here for almost half an hour. She’s considering just taking his car and driving it back home herself when Adachi comes running back out, using his briefcase as an umbrella, and says, “Hey, you want to come in? I can’t find the damn thing.”

This should be the part where she finds him suspicious and declines his offer, or the part where she says that she’ll wait, but the ‘okay’ slips from her too easily. He leads her from the car and into the building, up the creaky stairs and into an apartment with peeling wallpaper and a disturbing lack of taste or organization. It’s easy to see how a folder can get lost. She’s wet and dripping, for which Adachi apologizes and fetches her a towel. She dries her hair off, or tries to. Adachi’s stripped down to a t-shirt and jeans, and he looks even younger than she thought he did, yet at the same time—it doesn’t look right on him, like he’s wearing a costume. That shabby suit is the only thing she can imagine him in.

“You can watch TV,” Adachi says, so she does. The set flickers to life with a spray of static, and then the picture’s calm again. There’s a drama on. Sayomi tilts her head and tries to figure out what’s so great about this. Nothing, apparently, if she gives it some thought. Some more minutes go by. Adachi, finally, sits next to her on the couch. “Fuck,” he says. “Dojima-san is going to kill me.”

“What’s in it?” she says, tearing her eyes away from a group of girls dancing.

“Who knows,” Adachi says. “He says it’s important.” Adachi doesn’t sound particularly happy about that. He sighs, runs his hand through his hair. His arm falls across her shoulders, then withdraws, as though it had been unintentional. “Sorry, but this might take me a little while. I can’t show up in front of Dojima-san without it, you know? Do you need to be back soon? I know Dojima-san is working late.”

“Nanako-chan knows how to take care of herself,” she says, and from the way Adachi smiles, she feels like she’s said the right thing, even as a sinking feeling settles into her stomach. His arm, once again, finds her shoulders.

“Must be hard for a girl like you to live with Dojima-san,” he says. “Bet he makes you do everything.”

“I like doing it,” she says, and Adachi barks out a laugh. “It’s relaxing.”

“He doesn’t know how to do anything,” Adachi says, and it almost sounds regretful. “I don’t even know if he can make coffee for himself, that sad sack.” Adachi licks his lips, and says, “Do you have a boyfriend, Sayomi-kun?”

She laughs. “No.”

Adachi smiles. Leans in. “Do you want to?”

“You’re not good enough for it,” she says, and strokes the collar of his shirt. She’s done this before, and isn’t sure if she feels comforted by this or not. How does one not remember if they’ve kissed someone? But this comes easy enough.

Adachi’s hands settle on her breasts too fast for him to mask it as foreplay. So he seems to abandon the pretense of it, unbuttoning her shirt and deepening the kiss—maybe not out of passion, but to keep her from making noise. And when he rubs his fingers into her breasts, nails pulling at her nipples, she thinks that he wants to have control. Sayomi knows how these games work (since when and how did she—she doesn’t remember), though; knows that now it’s not a game of domination, but endurance. And that’s a game she’ll always win.

“You’ve done this before,” Adachi says. He sounds dispassionate, even as his face betrays disappointment.

“Well, so have you,” she says. “Slut.”

Adachi snorts. “Whatever,” he says, and rolls her panties off, too. He slips a finger into her, crooks it, makes at least an attempt at pleasing her. Then he sticks another finger in, rotates them inside her—he’s getting frustrated. He pulls her closer to him, tosses her legs over his shoulders, and tries to fuck her like that. Then, after a few more jabs, he seems to give up. Tosses his jeans aside, shoves his boxers down.

“You lazy bitch,” he mutters, as he spits onto his hand and rubs it onto himself. Then he works into her. He’s no good at it—fucks as well as he investigates, she guesses—although he tries hard enough to make up for it. When he ends up pulling out of her and coming on her stomach, he looks furious with her, and she smiles—smirks—up at him. It feels like a triumph.

 

*

 

She dreams again: fire and maggots, darkness and heat. But this time she sees the man’s face, holding up the comb in the dark. It’s dark and guarded; she can barely make out his profile. She reaches towards him, and he, after a moment, steps towards her.

“My wife,” the man says, his voice soft and distorted, as though it’s been traveling through an entire ocean, just to reach her ears. The way he touches her makes her feel like another woman. He sets the comb aside, and then stomps on it to extinguish its flames. His hands cover her whole body, roaming across her shoulders to the top of her breasts and then settling on her stomach. He lowers himself between her legs, and then seems to inspect it, checking for something. Then he brings his face in close and Sayomi feels something wet and warm flickering over the bones of her thigh, licking at the burns on what’s left of her flesh. It’s almost like he doesn’t care about the flies growing under her skin.

“Beautiful,” says the man. Her husband, she supposes. “Beautiful.”

“Liar,” she says. She takes his handsome, intact face in her hands, and crushes it with her palms. She holds his head and brings it tight to her chest. His hair is long and soft and his eyes are empty and dead. But they’ll be together now, the two of them, forever. He will love her forever, always. She wraps her body around him.

Always.

 

*

 

It is indeed as good of a day as she thought it’d be. Much to Sayomi’s displeasure, not only does everyone take notice of her good mood, they also all assume she has a boyfriend. The rumors about getting jilted by some boy back in the city has given her, she realizes, the reputation of a scorned woman.

“Not that you need a man in your life or anything,” Yosuke says, totally unconvincing in his disinterest as they pass by the science rooms on their way back to the shoe lockers. Sayomi ducks into one of the rooms as she hears the sound of the soccer team passing by. She doesn’t want to hear if Daisuke and Kou have heard about the latest variation of her zombie vampire werewolf boyfriend.

Sayomi looks over her shoulder at Yosuke, and smiles at him.

“But seriously,” he says. “Who is it?”

There’s a skeleton in the corner of the room. Yosuke makes a face at it. Sayomi goes up to it and touches its arm. All of the frailties of the human body, laid out to her vision: the flaws, the impossibilities, the peculiarities.

She doesn’t remember, but it’s easier to say, “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“I knew it!” Yosuke says. Then he wipes his bangs out of his eyes, and looks to the side, embarrassed.

“We broke up long before I came here.” Maybe it’s a trick of the light, but the skeleton looks familiar. She can’t place why. Maybe all skeletons look like someone you once knew, she decides, in the same way that she wound up remembering all Americans as being blond and blue eyed, even when they had brown hair and dark skin. “Do you think someone loves her?”

“What, that?” Yosuke says. “Well, I bet they’re dead now.”

“Maybe she’s still in there somewhere,” Sayomi says, and oh, how lonely it must be to rest inside a set of bones without a face. Sayomi strokes its cheek, careful to avoid touching the teeth. It’s a nice day, not too humid or too hot, and how remarkable that she can feel it. But what, she wonders, does the feeling—the head or the skin or the soul, and where do each of those things reside? At some point this skeleton was a person. And what if that person was still here with them now, listening to the same lectures year after year, watching the faces change, suffering the weather without being able to voice a complaint?

Yosuke touches her shoulder. “Hey,” he says. “Are you all right?”

“I wish,” she says, and she has a feeling that she heard this line last night on the TV while she was fucking Adachi, “that I never fell in love to begin with.”

Yosuke’s touch becomes awkward. He pats her back in the same way one might touch a block of ice: with care, careful to not get bitten. Sayomi isn’t sure why she said it, either, just that for a moment it seemed right, and when she said it, it was completely natural and easy to do. As though it was the truth.

“I’m just kidding,” she says, and the hollow fakeness fills her up again. But she sees it’s a shield against something too hard and too complicated for her to understand now. She welcomes it this time.

“Yeah, I thought so,” Yosuke says, but he doesn’t laugh or smile. He puts his hand on her shoulder, and then lets go of it just as quickly. “We’re too young to be saying crap like that.”

“We are,” she agrees. The sun is orange through the windows and trees. The world seems a little dimmer than before. She holds the skeleton's hand, and then turns it away from the sun. Yosuke gives her an odd look. She shrugs, not having any answers herself. “Let’s stop by Daidara's on our way back,” she says, and moves back into the shade. As they head for the main hall, Sayomi catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror: pale and thin, skin stretched tight over bone. The skeleton hanging in the room seems to laugh a warning at her, one that she ignores, because she is young and alive and practically immortal.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the badbadbathhouse prompt: _Anon has a girl!Souji request of an odd bent: Souji gets genderflipped, so he's a she, with long grey hair like when he cross-dresses in canon. Only Souji is really an amnesic Izanami, who set up the scenario for P4 and then erased her own mind in order to pose as a simple transfer student. Why? Because Izanami felt that in order to truly understand humanity's wishes she had to see their reaction to everything from their perspective._


End file.
